Sam Francis at the New York Times

David Brooks devotes his column in the New York Times today (22 September 2017) to a generous appreciation of Sam Francis, whom he calls “one of the most prescient writers of the past 50 years.” Francis’s name surfaced unexpectedly during the presidential campaign last year when the media took note of the role he and his ideas had played as an advisor to Pat Buchanan during his three presidential runs, but Brooks goes beyond that by outlining Francis’s general thesis regarding American politics over the past three or four decades and quoting liberally from his work. He concludes: “Francis urged Buchanan to run an unorthodox campaign (of the sort Trump ended up running), and was ignored. ‘If Buchanan loses the nomination, it will be because his time has not yet come,’ Francis wrote. The moment would end up coming in 2016, 11 years after Francis’ death.”